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A Nashville court has kept Tennessee’s license counters open to work permit holders until at least a Dec. 7 hearing, buying time but settling nothing.
Immigrants with federal work permits can keep getting a Tennessee driver’s license through at least early December. The Davidson County Chancery Court on Nov. 10 extended its order barring the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security from rejecting employment authorization cards as proof of lawful status, and set the next hearing for Dec. 7, the Tennessee Lookout reported. For DACA recipients, TPS holders, asylum applicants and others whose only federal status document is a work permit, the practical result is nearly four more weeks in which a renewal should not end in a refusal.
The case was brought by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and six immigrants. They challenge a change the department made this fall: after accepting the work permit as the basis for a temporary license for more than a decade, according to the Lookout, the state stopped, and people who had driven legally for years were turned away when they came in to renew, as earlier coverage of the DACA renewal denials described. Chancellor Russell Perkins first blocked the change with a temporary restraining order on Nov. 2, detailed in the report on that order. A hearing on whether to convert it into a temporary injunction had been expected Nov. 14.
What the extension changes, and what it leaves open
The Lookout describes the Nov. 10 order as an extension of the restraining order, not a decision on the merits of the coalition’s main argument: that the department changed its document rules without the public notice Tennessee administrative law requires.
The state’s position has not moved. A department spokesperson told the Lookout that state law requires temporary license applicants to document a specific period of lawful status, and that a work permit does not do that. That argument matters most for groups whose federal protection has no fixed end date, such as asylum applicants, because a work permit shows how long the holder may work, not how long the holder may stay.
The delay also gives others room to act. Gov. Bill Lee said in late October that he was reviewing the change (see the report on the governor’s review), and the General Assembly returns in January. A win on procedure alone would not stop the department from adopting the same limit through formal rulemaking, or lawmakers from writing a document list into the statute.
The stakes are hard to measure. Immigrant advocates told the Lookout that hundreds of Tennessee residents have already been denied temporary licenses or renewals and thousands more are at risk. The state has not published a count, and no official figure on refusals could be verified.
Employers’ Form I-9 rules are untouched; an unexpired work permit is still a List A document. For workers, the risk is losing a legal way to get to the job, and a card that lapses, after the end of automatic EAD extensions, can still cost a license however this case ends.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: Tennessee Lookout, Court extends order requiring Tennessee to issue driver’s licenses to Dreamers, other immigrants (Nov. 11, 2026); Tennessee Lookout, Judge blocks Tennessee from denying driver’s licenses to immigrants with work permits (Nov. 2, 2026); USCIS, Form I-9 Acceptable Documents.
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